A THOUSAND AL CAPONES

In response to your Sept. 24 editorial "The Cokeheads' Country":

Without examining the absurd call for what will amount to a dozen Vietnams,
or the obvious fact that every foreign nation in the world could disappear
tomorrow and the drug problem would only grow worse as the domestic
production of chemical equivalents like amphetamines simply replaced
cocaine, let's at least get some perspective on the U.S. drug problem.
Today we have about 16 million people who are addicted to either heroin,
cocaine or alcohol; about 14 million of those are addicted to alcohol.
Unless one believes that addicts would switch to lemonade if heroin and
cocaine disappeared, it is possible to view the entire drug war as the
action of 270 million people to spend $50 billion a year in a totally
futile effort to force two million addicts to switch to an arguably worse
addiction to alcohol or some other substitute.

Few users of cocaine harm anyone, much less become "cokeheads," but an
irresponsible media chooses to ignore a fact displayed annually in
government statistics. Addiction is primarily in the person and the
particular drug they favor is largely irrelevant. The French Medical
Research Institute has, in 1998, accurately described heroin, alcohol and
cocaine as about equally dangerous (with marijuana not in the same league
as the big three). Their health minister has gone so far as to ask, "Why
does society persecute those with some kinds of addiction, while calmly
putting up with others that are far more widespread, dangerous and expensive?"

Polls have indicated that some 99% of those who have never used cocaine
have no interest in it, but we have become slaves to the Chicken Little
prophecies of government and fearful of our own, demonstrably responsible,
neighbors. We do not even remember that cocaine was in dozens of products
like Coca-Cola for decades and addiction rates were lower than today.

Your editorial says, "This thriving criminal underworld threatens to
destabilize the entire Andean region." Yes, and that "thriving criminal
underworld," a thousand Al Capones reincarnate, and the attack on
democratic institutions, is a small fraction of the cost of modern
prohibition.

Jerry Epstein
Houston